The woods were already filled
with shadows one June evening, just before eight o'clock, though a bright
sunset still glimmered faintly among the trunks of the trees. A little
girl was driving home her cow, a plodding, dilatory, provoking creature
in her behavior, but a valued companion for all that. They were going away
from whatever light there was, and striking deep into the woods, but their
feet were familiar with the path, and it was no matter whether their eyes
could see it or not.

There was hardly a night the
summer through when the old cow could be found waiting at the pasture bars;
on the contrary, it was her greatest pleasure
to hide herself away among the huckleberry bushes,
and though she wore a loud bell she had made the discovery that if one
stood perfectly still it would not ring. So Sylvia had to hunt for her
until she found her, and call Co' ! Co' ! with never an answering Moo,
until her childish patience was quite spent. If the creature had not given
good milk and plenty of it, the case would have seemed very different to
her owners. Besides, Sylvia had all the time there was, and very little
use to make of it. Sometimes in pleasant weather it was a consolation to
look upon the cow's pranks as an intelligent attempt to play hide and seek,
and as the child had no playmates she lent herself to this amusement with
a good deal of zest. Though this chase had been so long that the wary animal
herself had given an unusual signal of her whereabouts, Sylvia had only
laughed when she came upon Mistress Moolly at the swamp-side, and urged
her affectionately homeward with a twig of birch leaves. The old cow was
not inclined to wander farther, she even turned in the right direction
for once as they left the pasture, and stepped along the road at a good
pace. She was quite ready to be milked now, and seldom stopped to browse.
Sylvia wondered what her grandmother would say because they were so late.
It was a great while since she had left home at half-past five o'clock,
but everybody knew the difficulty of making this errand a short one. Mrs.
Tilley had chased the hornéd torment too many summer evenings herself
to blame any one else for lingering, and was only thankful as she waited
that she had Sylvia, nowadays, to give such valuable assistance. The good
woman suspected that Sylvia loitered occasionally on her own account; there
never was such a child for straying about out-of-doors since the world
was made! Everybody said that it was a good change for a little maid who
had tried to grow for eight years in a crowded manufacturing town, but,
as for Sylvia herself, it seemed as if she never had been alive at all
before she came to live at the farm. She thought often with wistful compassion
of a wretched geranium that belonged to a town neighbor.

"'Afraid of folks,'" old Mrs.
Tilley said to herself, with a smile, after she had made the unlikely choice
of Sylvia from her daughter's houseful of children, and was returning to
the farm. "'Afraid of folks,' they said! I guess she won't be troubled
no great with 'em up to the old place!" When they reached the door of the
lonely house and stopped to unlock it, and the cat came to purr loudly,
and rub against them, a deserted pussy, indeed, but fat with young robins,
Sylvia whispered that this was a beautiful place to live in, and she never
should wish to go home.

The companions followed the shady
wood-road, the cow taking slow steps and the child very fast ones. The
cow stopped long at the brook to drink, as if the pasture were not half
a swamp, and Sylvia stood still and waited, letting her bare feet cool
themselves in the shoal water, while the great twilight moths struck softly
against her. She waded on through the brook as the cow moved away, and
listened to the thrushes with a heart that beat fast with pleasure. There
was a stirring in the great boughs overhead. They were full of little birds
and beasts that seemed to be wide awake, and going about their world, or
else saying good-night to each other in sleepy twitters. Sylvia herself
felt sleepy as she walked along. However, it was not much farther to the
house, and the air was soft and sweet. She was not often in the woods so
late as this, and it made her feel as if she were a part of the gray shadows
and the moving leaves. She was just thinking how long it seemed since she
first came to the farm a year ago, and wondering if everything went on
in the noisy town just the same as when she was there, the thought of the
great red-faced boy who used to chase and frighten her made her hurry along
the path to escape from the shadow of the trees.

Suddenly this little woods-girl
is horror-stricken to hear a clear whistle not very far away. Not a bird's-whistle,
which would have a sort of friendliness, but a boy's whistle, determined,
and somewhat aggressive. Sylvia left the cow to whatever sad fate might
await her, and stepped discreetly aside into the bushes, but she was just
too late. The enemy had discovered her, and called out in a very cheerful
and persuasive tone, "Halloa, little girl, how far is it to the road?"
and trembling Sylvia answered almost inaudibly, "A good ways."

She did not dare to look boldly
at the tall young man, who carried a gun over his shoulder, but she came
out of her bush and again followed the cow, while he walked alongside.

"I have been hunting for some
birds," the stranger said kindly, "and I have lost my way, and need a friend
very much. Don't be afraid," he added gallantly. "Speak up and tell me
what your name is, and whether you think I can spend the night at your
house, and go out gunning early in the morning."

Sylvia was more alarmed than
before. Would not her grandmother consider her much to blame? But who could
have foreseen such an accident as this? It did not seem to be her fault,
and she hung her head as if the stem of it were broken, but managed to
answer "Sylvy," with much effort when her companion again asked her name.

Mrs. Tilley was standing in the
doorway when the trio came into view. The cow gave a loud moo by way of
explanation.

"Yes, you'd better speak up for
yourself, you old trial! Where'd she tucked herself away this time, Sylvy?"
But Sylvia kept an awed silence; she knew by instinct that her grandmother
did not comprehend the gravity of the situation. She must be mistaking
the stranger for one of the farmer-lads of the region.

The young man stood his gun beside
the door, and dropped a lumpy game-bag beside it; then he bade Mrs. Tilley
good-evening, and repeated his wayfarer's story, and asked if he could
have a night's lodging.

"Put me anywhere you like," he
said. "I must be off early in the morning, before day; but I am very hungry,
indeed. You can give me some milk at any rate, that's plain."

"Dear sakes, yes," responded
the hostess, whose long slumbering hospitality seemed to be easily awakened.
"You might fare better if you went out to the main road a mile or so, but
you're welcome to what we've got. I'll milk right off, and you make yourself
at home. You can sleep on husks or feathers," she proffered graciously.
"I raised them all myself. There's good pasturing for geese just below
here towards the ma'sh. Now step round and set a plate for the gentleman,
Sylvy!" And Sylvia promptly stepped. She was glad to have something to
do, and she was hungry herself.

It was a surprise to find so
clean and comfortable a little dwelling in this New England wilderness.
The young man had known the horrors of its most primitive housekeeping,
and the dreary squalor of that level of society which does not rebel at
the companionship of hens. This was the best thrift of an old-fashioned
farmstead, though on such a small scale that it seemed like a hermitage.
He listened eagerly to the old woman's quaint talk, he watched Sylvia's
pale face and shining gray eyes with ever growing enthusiasm, and insisted
that this was the best supper he had eaten for a month, and afterward the
new-made friends sat down in the door-way together while the moon came
up.

Soon it would be berry-time,
and Sylvia was a great help at picking. The cow was a good milker, though
a plaguy thing to keep track of, the hostess gossiped frankly, adding presently
that she had buried four children, so Sylvia's mother, and a son (who might
be dead) in California were all the children she had left. "Dan, my boy,
was a great hand to go gunning," she explained sadly. "I never wanted for
pa'tridges or gray squer'ls while he was to home. He's been a great wand'rer,
I expect, and he's no hand to write letters. There, I don't blame him,
I'd ha' seen the world myself if it had been so I could.

"Sylvy takes after him," the
grandmother continued affectionately, after a minute's pause. "There ain't
a foot o' ground she don't know her way over, and the wild creaturs counts
her one o' themselves. Squer'ls she'll tame to come an' feed right out
o' her hands, and all sorts o' birds. Last winter she got the jay-birds
to bangeing here, and I believe she'd 'a' scanted
herself of her own meals to have plenty to throw out amongst 'em, if I
hadn't kep' watch. Anything but crows, I tell her, I'm willin' to help
support -- though Dan he had a tamed one o' them that did seem to have
reason same as folks. It was round here a good spell after he went away.
Dan an' his father they didn't hitch, -- but he never held up his head
ag'in after Dan had dared him an' gone off."

The guest did not notice this
hint of family sorrows in his eager interest in something else.

"So Sylvy knows all about birds,
does she?" he exclaimed, as he looked round at the little girl who sat,
very demure but increasingly sleepy, in the moonlight. "I am making a collection
of birds myself. I have been at it ever since I was a boy." (Mrs. Tilley
smiled.) "There are two or three very rare ones I have been hunting for
these five years. I mean to get them on my own ground if they can be found."

"Oh no, they're stuffed and preserved,
dozens and dozens of them," said the ornithologist, "and I have shot or
snared every one myself. I caught a glimpse of a white heron a few miles
from here on Saturday, and I have followed it in this direction. They have
never been found in this district at all. The
little
white heron, it is," and he turned again to look at Sylvia with the
hope of discovering that the rare bird was one of her acquaintances.

But Sylvia was watching a hop-toad
in the narrow footpath.

"You would know the heron if
you saw it," the stranger continued eagerly. "A queer tall white bird with
soft feathers and long thin legs. And it would have a nest perhaps in the
top of a high tree, made of sticks, something like a hawk's nest."

Sylvia's heart gave a wild beat;
she knew that strange white bird, and had once stolen softly near where
it stood in some bright green swamp grass, away over at the other side
of the woods. There was an open place where the sunshine always seemed
strangely yellow and hot, where tall, nodding rushes grew, and her grandmother
had warned her that she might sink in the soft black mud underneath
and never be heard of more. Not far beyond were the salt
marshes just this side the sea itself, which Sylvia wondered and dreamed
much about, but never had seen, whose great voice could sometimes be heard
above the noise of the woods on stormy nights.

"I can't think of anything I
should like so much as to find that heron's nest," the handsome stranger
was saying. "I would give ten dollars to anybody who could show it to me,"
he added desperately, "and I mean to spend my whole vacation hunting for
it if need be. Perhaps it was only migrating, or had been chased out of
its own region by some bird of prey."

Mrs. Tilley gave amazed attention
to all this, but Sylvia still watched the toad, not divining, as she might
have done at some calmer time, that the creature wished to get to its hole
under the door-step, and was much hindered by the unusual spectators at
that hour of the evening. No amount of thought, that night, could decide
how many wished-for treasures the ten dollars, so lightly spoken of, would
buy.

The next day the young sportsman
hovered about the woods, and Sylvia kept him company, having lost her first
fear of the friendly lad, who proved to be most kind and sympathetic. He
told her many things about the birds and what they knew and where they
lived and what they did with themselves. And he gave her a jack-knife,
which she thought as great a treasure as if she were a desert-islander.
All day long he did not once make her troubled or afraid except when he
brought down some unsuspecting singing creature from its bough. Sylvia
would have liked him vastly better without his gun; she could not understand
why he killed the very birds he seemed to like so much. But as the day
waned, Sylvia still watched the young man with loving admiration. She had
never seen anybody so charming and delightful; the woman's heart, asleep
in the child, was vaguely thrilled by a dream of love. Some premonition
of that great power stirred and swayed these young creatures who traversed
the solemn woodlands with soft-footed silent care. They stopped to listen
to a bird's song; they pressed forward again eagerly, parting the branches
-- speaking to each other rarely and in whispers; the young man going first
and Sylvia following, fascinated, a few steps behind, with her gray eyes
dark with excitement.

She grieved because the longed-for
white heron was elusive, but she did not lead the guest, she only followed,
and there was no such thing as speaking first. The sound of her own unquestioned
voice would have terrified her -- it was hard enough to answer yes or no
when there was need of that. At last evening began to fall, and they drove
the cow home together, and Sylvia smiled with pleasure when they came to
the place where she heard the whistle and was afraid only the night before.

II.

Half a mile from home, at the
farther edge of the woods, where the land was highest, a great pine-tree
stood, the last of its generation. Whether it was left for a boundary mark,
or for what reason, no one could say; the woodchoppers who had felled its
mates were dead and gone long ago, and a whole forest of sturdy trees,
pines and oaks and maples, had grown again. But the stately head of this
old pine towered above them all and made a landmark for sea and shore miles
and miles away. Sylvia knew it well. She had always believed that whoever
climbed to the top of it could see the ocean; and the little girl had often
laid her hand on the great rough trunk and looked up wistfully at those
dark boughs that the wind always stirred, no matter how hot and still the
air might be below. Now she thought of the tree with a new excitement,
for why, if one climbed it at break of day, could not one see all the world,
and easily discover from whence the white heron flew, and mark the place,
and find the hidden nest?

What a spirit of adventure, what
wild ambition! What fancied triumph and delight and glory for the later
morning when she could make known the secret! It was almost too real and
too great for the childish heart to bear.

All night the door of the little
house stood open and the whippoorwills came
and sang upon the very step. The young sportsman and his old hostess were
sound asleep, but Sylvia's great design kept her broad awake and watching.
She forgot to think of sleep. The short summer night seemed as long as
the winter darkness, and at last when the whippoorwills ceased, and she
was afraid the morning would after all come too soon, she stole out of
the house and followed the pasture path through the woods, hastening toward
the open ground beyond, listening with a sense of comfort and companionship
to the drowsy twitter of a half-awakened bird, whose perch she had jarred
in passing. Alas, if the great wave of human interest which flooded for
the first time this dull little life should sweep away the satisfactions
of an existence heart to heart with nature and the dumb life of the forest!

There was the huge tree asleep
yet in the paling moonlight, and small and silly Sylvia began with utmost
bravery to mount to the top of it, with tingling, eager blood coursing
the channels of her whole frame, with her bare feet and fingers, that pinched
and held like bird's claws to the monstrous ladder reaching up, up, almost
to the sky itself. First she must mount the white oak tree that grew alongside,
where she was almost lost among the dark branches and the green leaves
heavy and wet with dew; a bird fluttered off its nest, and a red squirrel
ran to and fro and scolded pettishly at the
harmless
housebreaker. Sylvia felt her way
easily. She had often climbed there, and knew that higher still one of
the oak's upper branches chafed against the pine trunk, just where its
lower boughs were set close together. There, when she made the dangerous
pass from one tree to the other, the great enterprise would really begin.

She crept out along the swaying
oak limb at last, and took the daring step across into the old pine-tree.
The way was harder than she thought; she must reach far and hold fast,
the sharp dry twigs caught and held her and scratched her like angry talons,
the pitch made her thin little fingers clumsy and stiff as she went round
and round the tree's great stem, higher and higher upward. The sparrows
and robins in the woods below were beginning to wake and twitter to the
dawn, yet it seemed much lighter there aloft in the pine-tree, and the
child knew she must hurry if her project were to be of any use.

The tree seemed to lengthen itself
out as she went up, and to reach farther and farther upward. It was like
a great main-mast to the voyaging earth; it must truly have been amazed
that morning through all its ponderous frame as it felt this determined
spark of human spirit wending its way from higher branch to branch. Who
knows how steadily the least twigs held themselves to advantage this light,
weak creature on her way! The old pine must have loved his new dependent.
More than all the hawks, and bats, and moths, and even the sweet voiced
thrushes, was the brave, beating heart of the solitary gray-eyed child.
And the tree stood still and frowned away the winds that June morning while
the dawn grew bright in the east.

Sylvia's face was like a pale
star, if one had seen it from the ground, when the last thorny bough was
past, and she stood trembling and tired but wholly triumphant, high in
the tree-top. Yes, there was the sea with the dawning sun making a golden
dazzle over it, and toward that glorious east flew two hawks with slow-moving
pinions. How low they looked in the air from that height when one had only
seen them before far up, and dark against the blue sky. Their gray feathers
were as soft as moths; they seemed only a little way from the tree, and
Sylvia felt as if she too could go flying away among the clouds. Westward,
the woodlands and farms reached miles and miles into the distance; here
and there were church steeples, and white villages, truly it was a vast
and awesome world

The birds sang louder and louder.
At last the sun came up bewilderingly bright. Sylvia could see the white
sails of ships out at sea, and the clouds that were purple and rose-colored
and yellow at first began to fade away. Where was the white heron's nest
in the sea of green branches, and was this wonderful sight and pageant
of the world the only reward for having climbed to such a giddy height?
Now look down again, Sylvia, where the green marsh is set among the shining
birches and dark hemlocks; there where you saw the white heron once you
will see him again; look, look! a white spot of him like a single floating
feather comes up from the dead hemlock and grows larger, and rises, and
comes close at last, and goes by the landmark pine with steady sweep of
wing and outstretched slender neck and crested head. And wait! wait! do
not move a foot or a finger, little girl, do not send an arrow of light
and consciousness from your two eager eyes, for the heron has perched on
a pine bough not far beyond yours, and cries back to his mate on the nest
and plumes his feathers for the new day!

The child gives a long sigh a
minute later when a company of shouting cat-birds
comes also to the tree, and vexed by their fluttering and lawlessness the
solemn heron goes away. She knows his secret now, the wild, light, slender
bird that floats and wavers, and goes back like an arrow presently to his
home in the green world beneath. Then Sylvia, well satisfied, makes her
perilous way down again, not daring to look far below the branch she stands
on, ready to cry sometimes because her fingers ache and her lamed feet
slip. Wondering over and over again what the stranger would say to her,
and what he would think when she told him how to find his way straight
to the heron's nest.

"Sylvy, Sylvy!" called the busy
old grandmother again and again, but nobody answered, and the small husk
bed was empty and Sylvia had disappeared.

The guest waked from a dream,
and remembering his day's pleasure hurried to dress himself that it might
sooner begin. He was sure from the way the shy little girl looked once
or twice yesterday that she had at least seen the white heron, and now
she must really be made to tell. Here she comes now, paler than ever, and
her worn old frock is torn and tattered, and smeared with pine pitch. The
grandmother and the sportsman stand in the door together and question her,
and the splendid moment has come to speak of the dead hemlock-tree by the
green marsh.

But Sylvia does not speak after
all, though the old grandmother fretfully rebukes her, and the young man's
kind, appealing eyes are looking straight in her own. He can make them
rich with money; he has promised it, and they are poor now. He is so well
worth making happy, and he waits to hear the story she can tell.

No, she must keep silence! What
is it that suddenly forbids her and makes her dumb? Has she been nine years
growing and now, when the great world for the first time puts out a hand
to her, must she thrust it aside for a bird's sake? The murmur of the pine's
green branches is in her ears, she remembers how the white heron came flying
through the golden air and how they watched the sea and the morning together,
and Sylvia cannot speak; she cannot tell the heron's secret and give its
life away.

Dear loyalty, that suffered a
sharp pang as the guest went away disappointed later in the day, that could
have served and followed him and loved him as a dog loves! Many a night
Sylvia heard the echo of his whistle haunting the pasture path as she came
home with the loitering cow. She forgot even her sorrow at the sharp report
of his gun and the sight of thrushes and sparrows dropping silent to the
ground, their songs hushed and their pretty feathers stained and wet with
blood. Were the birds better friends than their hunter might have been,
-- who can tell? Whatever treasures were lost to her, woodlands and summer-time,
remember! Bring your gifts and
graces and tell your secrets to this lonely
country
child!

Jewett comments on "A White
Heron"

From a letter to Annie Fields,
written in early 1886 (Fields, Letters, 59-60). "Mr. Howells thinks
that this age frowns upon the romantic, that it is no use to write romance
any more; but dear me, how much of it there is left in every-day life after
all. It must be the fault of the writers that such writing is dull, but
what shall I do with my 'White Heron` now she is written? She isn't a very
good magazine story, but I love her, and I mean to keep her for the beginning
of my next book and the reason for Mrs. Whitman's pretty cover."

NOTES

"A White Heron" was originally
published in A White Heron & Other Stories (1886), then reprinted
in Tales of New England (1890). This text is from a reprinting of
the 1914 edition of A White Heron & Other Stories. See Tales
of New England for a slightly different text and a table of differences
between these two versions. Where I have noticed probable errors in a text,
I have added a correction and indicated the change with brackets. If you
find errors in this text or if you see items that you believe should be
annotated, please communicate with the site manager. [ Back ]

huckleberry bushes: Gaylussacia,
of the heath family, erica, is a shrub that produces a dark blue
edible berry. [ Back ]

bangeing: Though
often defined as to idle or loaf, sometimes in the sense of taking advantage
of someone's hospitality, Josephine Donovan points out that in current
usage, the word may not have such moralistic implications. Donovan
says that a bangeing place "is simply a gathering place, like a village
store," a place to "hang out." (See "Jewett on Race, Class, Ethnicity,
and Imperialism: A Reply to her Critics." Colby Quarterly 38:4
(December 2002), 413. [ Back ]

a little white
heron: the snowy egret. It was hunted nearly to extinction for its feathers,
which were used in women's hats. For more information and to see photographs,
click
here. [ Back ]

salt marshes: See Jewett's
A
Marsh Island (Chapter 7 for example) for a description of salt marsh
life. [ Back ]

whippoorwills: this
species of nightjar has a distinctive nocturnal song (Research, Allison
Easton). [ Back ]

housebreaker: Jewett
may mean one who escapes from a house as well as one who breaks in. See
Jewett's sketch, "The Confession of a House-Breaker," in The Mate of
the Daylight and Friends Ashore (1883). [ Back ]

cat-birds: Probably the
Gray Catbird, named because its characteristic call note is a cat-like
mew. [ Back ]